OBAMA, LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS DISCUSS GUN VIOLENCE

President urged to place efforts on background checks

Law enforcement leaders who met with President Barack Obama Monday urged him to focus on strengthening gun purchase background checks and mental health systems, but did not unify behind his more controversial gun control efforts.

The message from sheriffs and police chiefs gathered at the White House reflected the political reality in Congress that the assault weapons ban in particular is likely to have a hard time winning broad support. The president appeared to recognize the challenge of getting everything he wants from Congress as well, participants in the meeting said.

“We’re very supportive of the assault weapons ban,” as police chiefs, said Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief J. Thomas Manger in an interview with The Associated Press. “But I think everybody understands that may be a real tough battle to win. And one of the things that the president did say is that we can’t look at it like we have to get all of these things or we haven’t won.”

Opinions over an assault weapons ban and limits on high capacity magazines — two measures the president supports — were divided in the room. While Manger said the police chiefs from the large cities support that kind of gun control, some of the elected sheriffs who were in the meeting may not.

“I think what was made clear was that gun control in itself is not the salvation to this issue,” said Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald of Story County, Iowa, one of 13 law enforcement leaders who met with the president, vice president and Cabinet members for more than an hour, seated around a conference table in the Roosevelt Room.

Among the participants included three chiefs that responded to the worst shootings of 2012, including Aurora, Colo., where 12 were killed in July; Oak Creek, Wis., where six died in an assault on a Sikh temple, and Newtown, Conn., scene of the most recent mass tragedy that left 20 first-graders dead.

The White House recognizes that police are a credible and important voice in the debate over guns that has developed following last month’s elementary school shooting in Connecticut. Obama opened the meeting before media cameras and declared no group more important to listen to in the debate.

“Hopefully if law enforcement officials who are dealing with this stuff every single day can come to some basic consensus in terms of steps that we need to take, Congress is going to be paying attention to them, and we’ll be able to make progress,” Obama said.

Obama urged Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, limit high capacity magazines and require universal background checks for would-be gun owners in a brief statement to the reporters. But participants said after the media was escorted from the room, the focus was not on the assault weapons ban.

“He did not ask us if we do or do not support an assault weapons ban,” said Hennepin County, Minn., Sheriff Richard Stanek, president of the Major County Sheriffs’ Association. “He did not ask us if we do or do not support high capacity magazines.”

“I told him very candidly that this isn’t just about gun control alone,” Stanek said. He said the bigger issue is that the Justice Department’s system for background checks is incomplete since many states don’t report mental health data or felony convictions.

He mentioned how in his home state of Minnesota, a 14-year-old shot and killed his mother with a shotgun, but was later able legally to buy additional handguns and automatic weapons because the background check did not reveal his history. “There’s example after example after example like that across the country,” Stanek said.